Fingerprint analysis and simultaneous determination of phenolic compounds in extracts of Curculiginis Rhizoma by HPLC-diode array detector.

Curculiginis Rhizoma (Curculigo orchioides GAERTN.) is a well-known Chinese herbal medicine, as well as an important Rasayana drug in India. Current criteria of quality control on this herb are to quantitatively analyze single compound curculigoside, which fail to comprehensively evaluate quality of this herb. In this paper, a simple and reliable HPLC coupled with diode array detector (DAD) method was developed to evaluate the quality of Curculiginis Rhizoma through establishing chromatographic fingerprint and simultaneously quantitating four phenolic compounds, orcinol glucoside, orcinol, 2,6-dimethoxybenzoic acid and curculigoside. The fingerprint displayed eleven common peaks, and the similarity index of different samples was in a range of 0.890-0.977. Validation of the method was acceptable, with 96.03-102.82% accuracy in recovery test and inter and intra-day precisions were less than 2%. This developed method by having a combination of chromatographic fingerprint and quantitation analysis could be applied to the quality control of Curculiginis Rhizoma.

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of chemical constituents of Centipeda minima by HPLC-QTOF-MS & HPLC-DAD.

A high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS) method in both positive and negative ion modes was established to investigate the major constituents in the ethanolic extract of Centipeda minima (EBSC). Twelve common components including flavones and their glycosides, phenolic and polyphenolic acids, and sesquiterpene lactone were identified in ten batches of samples based on comparison with the retention time and accurate mass of external standards (mass accuracy within 3ppm) or the fragmentation patterns of tandem MS. Meanwhile, a simple, accurate and reliable HPLC-DAD method was also developed to determine the content of 10 chemical markers simultaneously. Results obtained from method validations including linearity, accuracy and precision showed that this new method is reliable and robust. Isochlorogenic acid A and brevilin A were found to be the most abundant in the ethanol extract of EBSC and could be served as markers for quality control of EBSC.

Development of an in-line HPLC fingerprint ion-trap mass spectrometric method for identification and quality control of Radix Scrophulariae.

Chromatographic fingerprinting has been widely accepted as a crucial method for qualitative and quantitative analyses of bioactives within traditional Chinese medicine. A fingerprint provides detailed information, specific for any given herb, thus facilitating the quality control measures of a given traditional Chinese medicine. In this article, quality assessment of Radix Scrophulariae was achieved by using high performance liquid chromatography combining diode-array detection and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-ESI/MS). Eight batches of sample obtained from different origins in China were used to establish the fingerprint and quantitative analyses. By comparing the retention times, UV and MS spectral data with reference standards, four characteristic peaks in the chromatograms were confirmed as corresponding to acetoside, angoroside C, cinnamic acid, and harpagoside. In addition, other two characteristic peaks were tentatively identified, following the literature interpretation of HPLC-ESI-MS and LC-MS/MS (affording structural information) to be sibirioside A and scrophuloside B(4), respectively. The results indicated that the newly developed HPLC-DAD-MS fingerprint method would be suitable for quality control of Radix Scrophulariae.